Author Archives: David Wahl

Fantastic essay on how to be creative…

February 19, 2007 By in Creativity, Weblogs Leave a comment

From Hugh MacLeod’s How to be Creative. Topics covered include:

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort and stamina.

11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.

Creativity In TImes Of Struggle – David Mamet

February 18, 2007 By in Creativity, Quotes 1 Comment

David Mamet in Three Uses of the Knife:

"I remember being told in school that art flourished during times of abundance, which allowed the culture, and the individual, to rise about the claims of subsistence and gave them, in effect, a surplus with which to create.

It seems to me, however, that the opposite is true. In the life of the individual and in the life of the community or the culture, art flourishes in times of struggle, and, in times of surplus, disappears."

Agree? Disagree? Is art a product of difficult times?

Quentin Tarantino’s Writing Advice

February 18, 2007 By in Creativity, Film, Writing Tags: Leave a comment

From Ain’t It Cool News:

‘Remember when you were nine years old and that favorite TV show of yours and all your friends just began to not be as good as it once was? How it used to be this thing you worshipped, but now the formula has gone a tad tepid and like 3 of your friends are over for a sleepover and you’re all hopped up on too much sugar talking about what the coolest episode ever would be? You’re vibrating from the energy of just unleashed possibilities and your Mom is telling you to get to sleep, but that Nine Year Old creative force is just shaking… running a thousand words a minute, spilling everything you ever dreamt of to your buddies and it feels like the greatest thing any of you have ever heard? Well that’s where you have to write from. You have to write with that energy and that fire. It is all about that magic 9 year old unleashed.’

David Lynch – “The Deep Fish Are the Best Fish”

February 18, 2007 By in Creativity Leave a comment

I’ve been reading Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity.

Here are a few observations on his creative process.

1. He compares creativity to fishing. You cast your line into the water and you get what you catch, not necessarily what you want. The surface fish are more common and easier to catch, the deep fish are the ones you want.

2. If you come up with an idea that you intuitively know fits, don’t work to justify using it. Just let it sit. If it doesn’t seem like it works, trust that it does. The deep fish might not seem to fit, but it just connects on a deeper and less obvious level.

3. If you get an idea that doesn’t fit the project you’re working on, set it aside and get to it later. Don’t throw things away.

4. Use mistakes or surprises that happen during the creative process as part of what you’re doing. Don’t smooth them over and ignore them. Remember, a pattern is just a mistake that gets repeated.

5. All the torment and trouble that you don’t want in your life, you want in your art. Keep the two separate.

6. Contrary to popular belief, things are beauitful as they decompose. If not on the whole, at least the visible textures.